Appreciating what we have.

Living with a sense of appreciation and gratitude is a key foundation to help us live more fulfilled lives with more satisfaction, enjoyment and zest.

For this appreciation to take hold it helps to step-back, become more reflective and just develop a sense of wonder at this amazing thing we call ‘life’ on this planet right now.

So this section aims to do just that and help us become more appreciative of where we are at.

Appreciation & Wonder:

The happiest people take time to appreciate things that others take for granted.

Unknown

Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement... get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.

Albert Einstein

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.

Albert Einstein

For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive.

DH Lawrence

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

Confucious

Be thankful for being alive - here & now. Take nothing for granted, for things can change. Everything is amazing. Everything is incredible. Savour the day, and everyone & everything in it, for Life is short. Make the most of what you have.Life is only as good as you make it. Live life to the fullest. Live well. Go forth with zest & vitality. One life. Live it.

S.H

Our galaxy the milky way as seen from earth. Pic:downthewormhole.blogspot.co.uk

Our place in the universe.

Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules, are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So that we are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That’s kinda cool! That makes me smile and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It’s not that we are better than the universe, we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you.

Bill Bryson

Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust.

Lawrence M. Krauss

We are stardust. In stargazing, we gaze at our origins. Stargazing is a spiritual practice.

Paul Harrison.

I want people to have an emotional response to science, because that's what I have. Thinking about the stars throws you outside of your own world and into the universe, and it is inspirational.

Prof Brian Cox

Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides, [going right back to the first microbes on earth 3.8 billion years ago] has been healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result -- eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly -- in you, right now.

Bill Bryson

The universe is so vast in relation to the matter it contains that it can be compared in the following way: A building 20 miles long, 20 miles wide and 20 miles high that contains 1 grain of sand.

There are 10 times more stars in the universe than grains of sand in all the world's deserts and beaches

If our entire solar system were the size of a pound (£) coin, the sun would be visible only under a microscope, and the nearest star would be 300 feet away.

Universe Facts

On its trip around the sun, the earth travels over a million and a half miles per day and orbits the Sun at 66,700mph.

Universe Facts

Planet earth...

We just happen to be living on a planet that is in just the right distance from our star, not to close, not too far but just right for humans to live comfortably. Any closer and it would be like Venus, far too hot for life, any further out and it would be like Mars, just too cold for life to survive. This is known as the Goldilocks Zone. Our Solar system, with its 8 planets, revolves around our star, in the Goldilocks zone of our Galaxy, known as the Milky Way. It is said, that if we were closer to the centre of our Galaxy, we might encounter much more radiation from the greater number of other stars further in, & there is the possibility of collisions with other solar systems in that crowded region. So again, not to close, not too far, but just right. What a unique place to live.

The tilt of the earth at 23.45° is a result of collisions with large bodies during the formation of the planets in the solar system. It is this tilt which gives Earth it's uniquely changing seasons over the course of 365 days.

Universe Facts

Life on earth may ultimately owe its origins to our serendipitously large moon. It is our moon which creates tidal waters, and these tidal cycles could have played a major role in the early chemical reactions necessary to ignite the first strands of life on earth.

If the entire history of earth from it's formation to now, were to be represented by a 24hour clock - early humans came on the scene just over a minute to midnight.

Universe Facts

Think of all that's happened on this special earth and in this universe for us to Be Here, Right Here, Right Now. Wow.

Stuart Hodgson

It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living.

David Attenborough

A lot of us take life on this planet for granted. Think of all the planets we know about - what is on them? Hardly nothing. Barren. Think of the images we see of the Moon or Mars. Lifeless. Then think again of our Earth. Amazing. Thriving. Full of life & diversity. And we are here, now, living amongst it all...

Stuart Hodgson

We are awfully lucky to be here - and by 'we' I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better. It is a talent we have only barely begun to grasp.

Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love

Marcus Aurelius

From the distant vantage point of deep space, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity—in all this vastness—there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

Carl Sagan.

Click here to view an interactive map of the Milky Way Galaxy - the sense of scale is incredible

It's really hard to get your head around the scale of the universe - but this interactive website does a great job of getting across the incredible scale of things http://htwins.net/scale2/

The world's best beaches - Seychelles beach photo from www.nature-landscape-photography.blogspot.co.uk

Nature

If spring came but once a century instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all the hearts to behold the miraculous change.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring.

Rachel Carson

Each moment of the year has its own beauty.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Some of nature's most exquisite handiwork is on a miniature scale, as anyone knows who has applied a magnifying glass to a snowflake.

Rachel Carson

In those times when I’m more reflective, I become truly amazed by the natural world - it is absolutely amazing. Stunning. Spectacular. Breathtaking. A lot of us don’t look at the world in this way. It’s like we are blind, although our eyes do work. We just don’t see it, we take it all for granted because we have become so used to the world. But if only we can open our eyes - the world will be a much more awe-inspiring place. Nothing we know of in our solar system, galaxy and universe for the matter, compares to the sheer diversity on this planet. Picture those barren images you see of Mars for example. Then think of our planet, Earth, and everything we have seen with our own eyes, and even in pictures, in books, on the internet and on TV & film from around the world. Wow.

S.H

The wonder of the life & human beings:

Over billions of years a perfect combination of unique, rare & key events have come together in our universe to enable our planet Earth to form and to not only posses the perfect conditions to allow life to develop, but also to have just the perfect mix of stability and variability to allow life to evolve into ever more spectacular, diverse life forms and landscapes that we see around the entire planet today. As yet we know of no other planet displaying the sheer thriving diversity of our planet and it's unlikely there will be one exactly the same in the billions and billions of planets around us. What a very special planet indeed.

S.H

An embryo is an amazing thing. From just one initial cell, an entire living, breathing body emerges, full of working cells and organs. It comes as no surprise that embryonic development is a very carefully orchestrated process—everything has to fall into the right place at the right time.

Heather Buschman

The human body is an amazing thing to behold. It does many things we are not aware, things that go on all throughout the day and night. When the body does these things, we go on about our daily lives like nothing is happening. We don't even realize anything is going on or exactly what it takes, the kind of power used and generated to do so.

It's a great shame that everyone one of us takes our magnificent bodies and health for granted, rarely stopping to marvel at it's astounding complex functioning right throughout our life. Often we only stop momentarily to appreciate and yearn for our bodies perfect functioning when we are laid low with illness, restricted by old age or worse still, when it is too late - and we are at the end of our lives.

S.H

leonardo de vinci

Materialistic & Technological Developments:

In the most developed countries, the average citizen now enjoys a material standard of living that would have made the greatest king of two hundred years ago turn green with envy.

John V. C. Nye

Try imaging your life without the following; washing machines, fridge-freezers, hot water or drinking water at the turn of a tap, central heating, flushable indoor toilets, ovens, microwaves, tv's, computers, smart-phones, electricity for that matter! Cars & other modes of comfortable transport to easily get you from A-to-B, shops that sell food & goods from around the world, the list is endless. Imagine if you were suddenly plonked in the middle of nowhere to fend for yourself, it would soon become clear what we take for granted and maybe then we'd begin to recognise the material riches at our disposal.

S.H

We live in an amazing, amazing world, and it's wasted on the crappiest generation of spoiled idiots.

Louis CK

We live in a fantastic time in human technological history, yet we're so busy, we forget to look in awe at things we use on a daily basis and take for granted; the internet, smart phones, touch screen tablets, flat screen tv's, the fastest personal computers, the most advanced forms of transport. Just stop and then compare what you have now to what someone had even 50 years ago.

Unknown

There is more technology that exists in a single laptop than was available throughout the world in 1974

James Canton

With the development of the Internet...we are in the middle of the most transforming technological event since the capture of fire.

John Perry Barlow

Today anyone with access to the internet can obtain at the click of a button almost any information you need about anything in the world, instantaneously, from almost anywhere.

Anoymous

Smart Phones - They let us communicate to almost anyone, anywhere. We can take photos on them, play games on them, store hundreds and hundreds of songs on them, they give us access to the largest repository of information ever created, almost anywhere and near instantaneously and we can access apps that suit any lifestyle. Ask your grandmother if she ever anticipated something like this--she didn't, and 10 years ago, neither did you.

Unknown

People say 'my phone sucks'. No it doesn't. The shittiest cell phone in the world is a miracle. Your life sucks. Around the phone.

Louis CK

I'm bored' is a useless thing to say. You live in a great, big, vast world that you've seen a tiny, tiny percent of.

Louis C.K

You are the direct result of 4 billion years of evolutionary success on this planet. Act Like it.

Unknown

All 12 images above found in various places on the internet.

Lofoten islands by Alex Nail

A new found sense of wonder & appreciation

Look out on life with amazement, not shock. The variety, the diversity, the manner of every person, the beauty amidst the drudgery, the contrasts, the opportunities, the heroism in the lives of ordinary people, your gifts, your talents, your friends - even just one friend - is all awesome. Live in awe, and entertain wonder, and you will be knocking on the door of true love. Don't kill it with cynicism or criticism, don't sabotage your life with moaning and complaining. Open the eyes in your head and the eye in your intellect and choose to see the stunning, awesome, diverse beauty of life happening around you right now. Meet it with your heart and you will enrich and be enriched in one single moment.

Brahma Kumaris, Mt Abu

Carpe diem! Rejoice while you are alive; enjoy the day; live life to the fullest; make the most of what you have. It is later than you think.

Horace

We could each class life as; beautiful; ugly; weird, crazy; a tragedy; a gift; hard; easy; boring; a struggle or an exhilerating adventure. But whatever your view, whatever your interpretation of life; surely, all things considered we can agree it’s all pretty damn amazing?

S.H

Life is fleeting. It moves so fast. Appreciate it while you can. For everything changes and soon what you are experiencing now will only be a memory - so savour as much of it as you can.

S.H

We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.

Nehru, Jawaharlal

Though you may travel the world to find the beautiful, you must have it within you or you will find it not.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough.

Toni Morrison

If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

Albert Camus

IF WE could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change

Buddha

The real voyage of discovery consists of not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

Marcel Proust

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.

Henry David Thoreau

One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself "What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?"

Rachel Carson

Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.

Ray Bradbury

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive- to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love-then make that day count!

Steve Maraboli

There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.

Einstein

Heaven is already here for those with eyes to see

Anonymous

Everything is amazing (But nobody seems amazed?)

Unknown

Short Stories

Creating a sense of awe & wonderment at the world..

Many of us look at the world in an indifferent sort of way - taking everything for granted and rarely actually considering anything in life with awe or wonder or amazement – our life's experience is greatly dimished as a result.

I once read a story of an ancient tribe, and it really made me stop and think and just look at life with fresher eyes and a renewed sense of awe. In order to try and help you rediscover an increased sense of awe and wonder, I'm going to re-tell that tory of the Kogi Indians of Columbia's Sierra Madre mountains. Whilst it can be accepted that the way the Kogi Indians go about creating this awareness in an actual human being can be deemed cruel and rather drastic, just trying to imagine how the story would play out if you were involved may actually help you to view the world with a bit more wonder....

The story is one of an ancient tribe who have learned to always have at least one among them who views the world with amazement and divinity. The priests of the Kogi learn by divination when a "High Soul" – a person destined to be a priest himself – is about to be born into the tribe. This child, shortly after birth, is taken into a deep cave, where his mother goes every few hours to feed him and attend to his needs. He can see only enough light to keep his eyes developing; can here only enough sounds of the cave to keep his ears alive. As he grows into childhood, the nurturing and feeding is taken over by the Kogi priests, who begin describing to the young boy what he'll see, hear and feel when he finally steps out of the cave for the first time and stands before the world outside. They tell him on how the world on which we live is large and beautiful and rich in detail. The boy, having only ever seen the dim light inside the cave and an occasional candlelight, can hardly imagine what it will be like "out there". He wonders what a tree or mountain or waterfall must look like, what these mystical animals that fly through the air must look like, and what it must feel like to have the 'Sun' warm his body.

When he approaches the age of puberty, with great ritual he is brought out of the cave and allowed to see the world for the very first time; "What a shock! How astounding! Look at the detail in that leaf – Look at the distant snow covered mountains –how is it possible for something to be so large? And the trees and the flowers and the animals and the birds" – he looks around, listens to the world, feels the sun on his skin for the first time in his life, and the experience of awe, splendour, amazement and gratitude is so great that the boy most often falls to his knees in shock before the majesty of the world. For the rest of his life, every time he opens his eyes he will never cease to be washed over with joy and awe and respect for the world. Because of this unique perspective he has of the world, he goes on to play a vital role in the Kogi Indian tribe.

The way most of us view the world is almost directly opposite to how this young newly initiated Kogi priest must view the world. We mostly take everything for granted, with either little or no sense of awe, wonder and amazement at the world. Just imagine for a brief moment how you would have felt in place of that young boy when he looked at the world for the very first time – let that thought stay with you so that you may carry on your day to day life with just a little more sense of awe and wonder at the magnificent nature of our world.

Inspiring video.

The Most Astounding Fact - Neil DeGrasse Tyson:

Astrophysicist Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson was asked by a reader of TIME magazine, "What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?" This is his answer: